Will changing the title of previous topics affect google results?
-
Hi all, just had a quick question about google results. I help run a sports forum and currently all our topics as seen as "Forum Name • Topic Title". I think that links to topics would appear much more user friendly if I switched the naming to "Topic Title • Forum Name". My question is, would this change affect previous links in any negative way or will google simply update past topics with the new naming convention? Thank in advance.
-
Good point, Marcin. I'm not using those mods as it seems Google indexes my pages fine. Thanks for the advice.
-
Hi Xee,
as long as you only change titles, you should be fine, and the change can actually improve your rankings.
Just one thing to keep in mind - make sure that by changing the titles, you don't change your URL structure at the same time. I know of some forum scripts with SEO extensions where URLs are directly tied to titles. Changing the entire title structure would result in changing all URLs, and that could destroy your rankings, at least temporarily.
-
Hi
My opinion is that Google will update old topics with new title and new naming conventions should help you rank better for topic title. There shouldn't be any negative effects of this change.
Kind regards
Bojan
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Rich Snippet
So i have been implementing rich snippets for work and all has been good until now, As you can see below the meta description has all of a sudden included the review date. The review date is the only date on the page. Any ideas what could be causing this? Thanks wqLKKl9
On-Page Optimization | | David-McGawn0 -
Strange google indexing behaviour
Hi all Looking for a second opinion on a strange issue with has occurred on my site. The site is a magento store and because I am using all the default merchant descriptions at the moment I have noindexed the product pages (there are 300k products, the plan is to rewrite the content as we go, starting with most popular sellers). The Gbot is blocked from the pages and all the products have header tag. We forgot to noindex the popular search terms page on the site and as a result google has indexed some search result pages - we may keep this open, not sure yet, We are seeing a very strange thing in the serps. Google has indexed the search result pages, as mentioned above, however, the description and title tag being used do not belong to that page, they belong to the product page the search result links to. If i do a search in google for the indexed pages i get the categories and lots of, what appears to be, product pages. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:arropa.co.uk/store&espv=2&biw=1536&bih=772&ei=LE5xVd3qA4HlUNnggKgH&start=250&sa=N One would assume that a page listed with the title of Ladies 1 Pair Young Trasparenze Mumbai Animal Print . and the description of Come on, program a little of your crazy side! Part of the edgy, sassy Young Trasparenze Medley, these soft touch, nontransparent stockings function a crazy, (along with the price) would be an entry for that individual product. However, clicking on that product opens up a search results page (very slowly as the site is processing an update still - it is not for public use thus far) which can be seen here http://arropa.co.uk/store/catalogsearch/result/?q=+ladies+1+pair+young+trasparenze+mumbai+animal+print+tights+75+off+military+l+ yes, the search result page is for that particular item but nowhere on the page is the title, description and price, nor has it ever been. Am a little puzzled about this and what it would do re duplicate content as im using the manufacturer data at present. Ideally i would like to keep the search results pages open. Any thoughts would be most welcome. Couple of things to note. Im aware the site is too slow for general public use. It will be fully cached once running, as i say, it has 300k+ products so isn't small. Also, am aware that there are no images. They exist but we are moving the images around, hence being down. Always a fun task when there are 25gb of the things!! Many thanks Carl
On-Page Optimization | | WonkyDog0 -
Does Rel=canonical affect google shopping feed?
I have a client who gets a good portion of their sales (~40%) from Google Product Feeds, and for those they want each (Product X Quantity) to have it’s own SKU, as they often get 3 listings in a given Google shopping query, i.e. 2,4,8 units of a given product. However, we are worried about this creating duplicate content on the search side. Do you know if we could rel=canonical on the site without messing with their google shopping results? The crux of the issue is that they want the products to appear distinct for the product feed, and unified for the web so as not to dilute. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | VISISEEKINC0 -
Removing old URLs from Google
We rebuilt a site about a year ago on a new platform however Google is still indexing URL's from the old site that we have no control over. We had hoped that time would have 'cleaned' these out but they are still being flagged in HTML improvements in GWT. Is there anything we can do to effect these 'external' dropping out of the indexing given that they are still being picked up after a year.
On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital0 -
Changing site title
I'm wondering what the procedure and implications are of changing my sites tile? I realise that my Having my keyword in my sites title whilst chasing the same keyword in articles may be causing over optimization. The slug also takes on the article title too, in effect giving me the keyword three times before I've even written my article. Example below. Imaginary site title : soap benefits.org Article: The essential guide to making homemade soap Slug: The-essential-guide-to-making-homemade-soap As you can see, soap has now been mentioned three times, not including excerpt/meta description or image alt tags. As most of the article titles would contain my supposed keyword "soap" I'm thinking the best option would be to change site title with allinoneseo (that possible?) and change the slug to something relevant, giving me more room to escape over optimization. Does this sound sensible? I don't have that many articles so if I had to change other things it wouldn't be too much of a hassle. It seems a pity to loose my sites title I picked, but if I end up writing hundreds of articles this would be a problem. Help appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | marangus0 -
Google picking up old pages
I recently redesigned a site that had all the keywords it was ranking for going to the home page. Now I have specific pages for each of these keywords but I'm seeing the home page (not the page that, if I do an on page optimization by hand in MOZ gives me an A rating) showing up in the auto reports (assuming pages Google sees for these keywords related to the url) as F's. They're all pointing to the home page. I've redirected the old index.html home page to the new but I suspect the reason is actually these pages (were) ranking for these terms (though none too well - all but one were not in the top 50 and one was 45) because these rankings are all dropping as well. I'm at a loss, with the site replaced, as to how to correct this and tell Google these keyword phrases all have their own pages now. I've dug through this forum and the only applicable answer I can see would be to add these phases to the home page (where they all rank for now) with anchored links to their new (A rated by Moz for these terms when I hand enter them) singular pages? Or is it just a waiting game?
On-Page Optimization | | adworksofboca0 -
Duplicate Page Title issues
Hello, I have a duplicate page title problem: Crawl Diagnostics Reported that my website got **sample URLs with this Duplicate Page Title **between:
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs.html and these URLs below:http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-2
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-3
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-4
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-5 I don't know why, because I have already implemented rel=”next” and rel=”prev” to canonical pages. Please give me an advice!0 -
How long does it take Google to index new title tags and meta descriptions?
Hi, I have launched a website ( www.bookkeepingking.com )and would like Google to reflect the latest title tag changes in its results. How long does it typically take to happen? I believe this might be one reason why the site may not be generating any search traffic yet, even though I haven't yet begun any link building yet. A couple of notes: When I enter site:bookkeepingking.com in the search box, the pages show up, but with the old/default title and meta descriptions. I am using the Yoast for SEO plugin I have resubmitted the XML map - Yoast created 2... /page-sitemap.xml and /post-sitemap.xml The changes were made about 1 week ago. WMT says that there are zero errors. Is there something I may have missed? Or do I just need to give it more time? Thanks in advance for your help. Erin
On-Page Optimization | | HiddenPeak0